
Qass. 
Book 



ADDRESS 



ON THE 



TWO HUNDREDTH AMIVERSART 



OF 



WORCESTER, MASS. 
OCTOBEK 14, 1884. 



GEORGE F. HOAR. 



ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



CITY GOVERNMENT AND CITIZENS, 



ON THE 



TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY 



WORCESTEE, 



OCTOBER 14, 1SS4, 



GEORGE F. HOAR. 



/\>' 



IT/ 



WORCESTER, 31 A S S , : 

PRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON, 
No. 311 Main Street. 

1885. 



ADDEESS. 



I AM, this evening, but a voice. As we strive to 
clasj) the two hands which seem to stretch out to us, 
on either side, through the mist, — the hand of our 
ancestry, and the hand of our posterity, — I can only 
imperfectly utter what is in the bosoms of all of you. 

The hour is consecrated to simple and common 
emotions ; and yet to the emotions which most dignify 
and ennoble human life. The imperfect instinct of 
afiection for parent and offspring, which nature has 
given to the brute, is confined to the period of infancy. 
In man, it becomes parental love and filial reverence. 
It is the tie that binds us together in the household. 
It extends beyond the grave, and reaches back to 
remote ancestors. It goes out with unspeakable yearn- 
ing even to the soil where the ashes of those we have 
loved repose. It impels us to seek, with those who are 
our kindred, a companionship, even in death. " Where 
the heart has laid down what it loved most," says the 
greatest of !N'ew England orators, " there it is desirous 
of laying itself down, ^o sculptured marble, no 
enduring monument, no honorable inscription, no ever- 
burning taper that would drive away the darkness of 
the tomb, can soften our sense of the reality of death, 
and hallow to our feelings the ground which is to cover 



U8, like the consciousness that we shall sleep, dust to 
dust, with the ol)jects of our all'ections." But human 
love rises to its highest dignity, and reaches its pro- 
foundest depth of tenderness, when its object is that 
political being to which we give the endearing name of 
country, or the town which is our birthplace, or the 
city which we fondly call our home. There are men in 
this audience whose blood would fly to their cheeks at 
the charge that some little town where they were born, 
had committed an act of dishonor two hundred years 
ago, as if the imputation were upon one of their own 
kindred to-day. AV^hat tones of triumph and joy stir 
the heart like those which celebrate our country's glory? 
What note of sorrow comes down through the ages 
like theirs who wept when they remembered Zion? 

I cannot, with the limits of this address, give in 
detail the history of Worcester for two hundred years. 
That has been done, in part, by an eminent scholai", 
whose family name has been honorably identified with 
this community for more than a century. Our learned 
and famous society, whose eai-ly labors attracted the 
attention and interest of Huml)oldt, which has thrown 
80 much light upon the antiquities of the continent, has 
not altogether neglected those specially belonging to 
the locality of its habitation. A younger association of 
investigators, the Society of Antiquity, will leave no 
field of local interest unexplored. I content myself 
with an estimate of some of the moral forces which 
have determined the history of this community, and 
with considering, briefly, what ground we can find of 



rational cheerfulness and hope, in contemj^lating the 
future. 

After the settlement of a few towns on the coast, in 
the first half of the 17th century, the rich interval of 
the Connecticut attracted the eyes of the plantej's of 
Kew England. Midway between the sea and the river, 
the margin of our beautiful lake afforded a convenient 
stojiping-place. This lake was well known to the 
Indians by the name Quansigeniog — " fishing place for 
pickerel," — Quonosuog was the Indian name for " long- 
nose," or pickerel ; and amaug denoted a fishing-place.^ 
In 1667, the General Court appointed a committee to 
" take an exact view," and report " whether the place 
be capable to make a village, and what number of 
families they conceive may be there accommodated." 
The next year the committee return that they have 
viewed the place, that it contains a tract of very good 
chestnut land, and that there may l)e- enough meadow 
for a small plantation, or town of about thirty families ; 



1 1 am permitted to annex the following letter from the eminent antiquary and 
scholar, J. Hammond Trumbull, Esq., of Hartford, Conn. His authority is the 
highest in the country on all matters relating to the language of the North American 
Indians, and is decisive of this question :— 

Hartford, September 2, ISSi. 

My Dear Mr. Hoar : 

" Quansigamffl??^^ Pond" is so named in Mass. Records, iv. (2), 
p. Ill; and as " Quausicamwr/," same vol., p. 293; -' Qimnslcamrmg." p. 307; and 
'* Quansicamo«," p. 341,— whence by easy transition came the modern form, Quinsig- 
amond. President Stiles, vrho had a good ear for Indian names, wrote this, in his 
Itinerary, " Quonsigemog." 

Qunnosu or Qiionnose (plural Quunosuog) was the Indian name for pickerel — 
literally "long nose:" and -rnnau;/ final, denotes a 'fishing place.' Qunnosuoq- 
amauy is " pickerel fishing-place,'' or " where they fish for pickerel." 

I have indicated the composition of this name", in my paper on Algonkin place 
names in Coll. Conn. Hist. Society, ii., IS,— though without mention of these early 
forms of the name. 

Very trulv yours, 

J. H. TRUMBULL. 



6 

that, if certain grants wliich the Court has made to the 
church of Maiden and others be recalled, and annexed 
to it, it may supply about sixty families. They there- 
fore conceive it expedient that it be reserved for a 
town, and land about eight miles sfjuare be laid out in 
the best form the place will bear. 

The General Court adopted these recommendations. 
Tlie committee were authorized to order and manage 
the new plantation. The Indian title was extinguished, 
and honorably paid for. A fort was erected. As early 
as 1673, the work of settlement began with some vigor. 
But Philip's war broke out in 1(37.3. Brookfield, Men- 
don, Lancaster, and Westborough, were our nearest 
neighbors, the three former being our sole barrier 
against the Indian wilderness. Lancaster and Brook- 
tield were uttei'ly destroyed, and Mendon abandoned. 
The planters here deserted their possessions and dis- 
persed among the larger towns. On the 2d of Decem- 
ber, 1675, the Indians destroyed the little village of six 
or seven houses, all that then existed of Quinsigamond. 

The war ended with the death of Philip, August 12th, 
1676. The l)roken remnant of the Indians sul^mitted 
to the power of the colony. The proprietors and the 
committee soon renewed their scheme for settlement. 
A meeting of proprietors was had in Cambridge, in 
1678, a survey made in 1683, and an agreement entered 
into Ajiiil 21, KJSJ:, to regulate the settlement, then 
fairly in i)rogres8. 

The General Court, at a session begun October 15th, 
1684, granted the request of the committee, Daniel 



Gookin, Daniel Henchman, and Thomas Prentice, that 
their plantation at Quinsigamoncl be called Worcester.^ 
This has been commonly supposed to have been in 
honor of the city of Worcester in England. We might 
well account it an honor to be the namesake of that 
beautiful town upon the Severn, the " civitas in 
hello et in pace fidelisP Mr. Whitmore, in his essay 
on the names of towns, in the Proceedings of the 
Massachusetts Historical Society, for February 11th, 
1873, says there is a tradition that the name was given 
by the committee to commemorate the battle of Worces- 
ter, the " crowning mercy" where Cromwell shattered 
the forces of Charles 2d, and as a defiance to the 
Stuarts. . I do not know the source or the antiquity of 
this tradition. But it is not without probability. 
There is no reason to think that either of the staunch 
old Puritans who composed the committee, had the 
slightest connection with the city or shire of Worcester. 
Prentice is believed by his descendants to have learned 
the art of war under Cromwell. Gookin was its most 
important member. He may be called the founder of 

1 The limited time allowed for the preparation of this address made it necessarily 
extremely imperfect. One defect, of which the author is especially sensible, is the 
omission of any mention of Ephraim Curtis. He is entitled to be honored as the first 
settler of Worcester, notwithstanding the late discovery that a rude house had been 
built here prior to his settlement. It is clear that the owner of the house did not 
occupy it. What sort of a house it was, whether it was built for the surveyors, 
or for the committee who inspected the place to determine its fitness for habita- 
tion, or as a shelter for travellers on their way to the Connecticut, does not 
appear. But it is unlikely that any permanent settler would have dwelt there with- 
out leaving some trace of himself in the cotemporary record. Curtis represented an 
element which has not received full justice from Xew England history, — the brave 
and adventurous frontiersman. His exploit in saving the besieged garrison of 
Brookfield equals anything Cooper has imagined of the Leatherstocking. 

His descendants, a highly respected family, bearing his name, still dwell on the 
spot where he settled. He was the ancestor, also, of the famous and eloquent orator, 
George William Curtis. 



8 

Worcester. He was the major-general of the colony. 
He is, to me, with the possible exception of John 
Winthrop, the most attractive character in our colonial 
history. His great qualities have never yet received 
their due from liistorians. He was the companion and 
protector of the regicides GolVe and AVhalley, on the 
one hand, and an earnest advocate for justice to the 
Indians on the other. Golfe and Whalley came over 
in the same ship with him in IGGU. While the found- 
ing of AVoi-cester was in progress, they were dwelling 
at Hadley, in a hiding i)lace of which he knew the 
secret. Whalley was own cousin of l^oth Cromwell 
and Hampden. He had beaten Prince Rupert at 
Naseby, and led the horse in the army which compelled 
him to the surrender of Bristol. The loyalists of the 
English Worcester surrendered that city to him in 
1043. 

Gookin did nut live long enough to take up his 
abode here. But his footsteps have been upon our 
fields. He watched over Worcester in its cradle, until 
his death. 1 hope his statue may some day grace our 
city. He was an old Kentish soldier, and had been the 
personal and highly trusted friend of the great Protec- 
tor, who, 

"(iiiidcil l)y faitli ;iiiil iiKitclilo^ lortiliiilf, 
'l"o pciK'f ami tnitli lii> Lrlorioii- way lia<l plouglieil. 
And on tlif nuck of crowned fortiuu' proud 
Had ri-artd God's trophit'S. and hi> work pur-ncd. 
Wliilc Darwfii stream, witli Idofid of Si-tits iniluHU-d. 
And Dunbar field, resound bis praises loud, 

Auil Wnrcexter's laiireatf- n-reoth.'^ 

The year of which we are si)eaking was the year of 
the most serious attempt ever made upon the li])ertie8 



9 

of Massachusetts. -The intelligence of the fraudulent 
judgment in the English chancery, vacating her char- 
ter, reached Boston on the 10th September. This was 
the darkest day in the annals of the Commonwealth. 
This decree placed under the feet of the Stuarts again 
the liberties which our Fathers had dwelt sixty years in 
the wilderness to maintain. For a good while, in expec- 
tation of this judgment, the hearts of the people had 
been deeply stirred. In January before. Increase 
Mather, President of the College, had made a speech in 
Boston town-meeting, against a ^proposition not to con- 
tend with his majesty in a course of law, for the defence 
of the charter. " What the Lord our God hath given 
us," said he, "shall we not possess it? God forbid, that 
we should give away the inheritance of our Fathers. 
The loyal citizens of London would not surrender their 
charter, lest their posterity should curse them for it. 
Shall we do such a thing? I hope there is not one 
freeman in Boston that can be guilty of it." The 
people fell into tears, and cried " It is better if we must 
die, to die by the hands of others, than by our own." 
I think we are well justified in believing that it was the 
memory of the great victory for civil and religious 
liberty which God had vouchsafed to the Puritan over 
Charles Stuart, and not of the loyalty to the throne 
which was the great distinction of the English city, 
that the three stout soldiers of the committee desired to 
perpetuate. 

The settlement was destined to be broken up again. 
In 1696, a band of hostile Albany or Western Indians 



10 

penetrated as far as Worcester. AVhen Queen Anne's 
war broke out in 1702, the inhal)itants again tied. 
Digory Sargent, who refused to abandon his dwelling, 
was slain with his wife, and his five children carried 
captive to Canada. The town was re-occupied in 1713, 
which is the date of its j)ermanent settlement. It was 
incorporated as a town, June l-lth, 1722. The first 
town meeting was held, September 28th, 1722. It held 
its place among the towns of the Commonwealth, until 
the incorporation of the city, February 29th, 18-18. 

Such, fellow-citizens, the birth, and such the baptism, 
of the heroic child. Let us see of what lineage he 
came, what blood was in his veins, who stood about 
his cradle, in what gymnasium he was trained, what 
great beliefs he inherited, what creed he was taught, 
what alliances, what friendships he has made; — that he 
has been able to tal^e his place among giants; to be a 
leader, and a companion of leaders, in great victories in 
war, and greater victories in peace; that his fields and 
gardens, to-day, are teeming with fruit, and corn, and 
flowers ; that the labor of the whole world, two hundred 
years ago, could not create, its fancy could scarce con- 
ceive, this single day's product of his factories and 
worlfshops. "The Lord found him in a desert land, 
and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, 
he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye ; 
he made liini ride on the high places of the earth, that 
he might eat the increase of the fields." 

The first settlers were of pure English blood. They 
had inlu'ritcd the Norseman's hunger for adventure, 



11 

which found satisfaction in forest and in sea, and the 
Saxon love of local self-government, which resulted in 
the institution of the town. 

Except Holland and Switzerland, which together 
contained, at that time, I suppose, a population scarcely 
greater than that of Massachusetts to-day, there was 
no spot on earth, except England, whose government 
was free, or recognized any popular rights. 

In England, the long battle seemed going against 
liberty. The great company that had surrounded Crom- 
well were dead, or in hiding, or in exile. Puritanism 
seemed to have spent itself as a force in England, and 
had crossed the sea. But the love of liberty, not a 
mere freedom from restraint, but a liberty secured and 
guarded by permanent institutions, was the master 
passion of the English race. The first half of the 
seventeenth century, which was the period of New 
England colonization, was the time when the thoughts 
of the whole English people had been turned to a 
discussion of the principles of government. The intel- 
lectual activity, which in the time of Elizabeth, which 
preceded, and that of Anne which followed, produced a 
literature never equalled but in Athens, found occupa- 
tion in dealing with the great questions which lie at the 
foundation of states. The men who came here, there- 
fore, were ready for the framing of constitutions and 
statutes. The simple and perfect mechanism of town 
and parish was as natural to them as the building its 
nest to a bird. 

But the liberty which our Fathers brought with them 



12 

from England dillered in one essential particular from 
that wliic'h they left l)ehind. In England, that love had 
been, in the main, a })urely selfish passion. The Eng- 
lishman had demanded freedom as a privilege for 
himself, or his class. The contest for political or civil 
rights had been always a strife of classes. At one 
time, it was the crown against the nol)les. At another, 
it was the nobles against the crown. At another, it 
was Becket, the churchman of humble origin and 
popular sympathies, against king and noble. It is, I 
believe, true that no class in England ever got its right 
from the sense of justice of any other. Her freedom, 
as it broadened slowly down, has ever been wrung by 
violence or threats from the fears of her rulers. With 
all her great qualities, she has had a limited and insular 
moral law. She has ever l)een a tyrant and a ruffian in 
her dealings with weaker nations. This trait has not 
wholly failed to manifest itself in her descendants here. 
We have not seemed to be quite able to get the Eng- 
lishman out of our blood. Our moral sense sometimes 
fails when we come to deal w^ith other races or humbler 
classes than our own. But the religion of the Puritan 
was one which he believed was a rule for his conduct 
in the things whicli pertained to this life, as well as 
that beyond. He brought to the government of the 
state the austere sense of religious *and moral ol)liga- 
tion. However he may have sometimes failed in the 
ap})lication of the principle, justice was to him not only 
a right of his own, but a duty to others. The condi- 
tions of his existence, the necessity of tlie constant 



13 

labor of every man in clearing the wilderness, made 
class distinctions impossible. The contest between 
these two spirits, which we are wont to term the 
Cavalier and the Puritan, has played a great part in 
our national and local history. It is by no means yet 
over. But the Puritan spirit and faith, which founded 
Worcester two hundred years ago, have, in the main 
controlled the currents of her history. 

But let us, in all this, be just to England. We have 
this treasure in earthen vessels. Whatever cause of 
complaint we have of her, let us not forget, that the 
only plant of liberty, that, in modern times, has lived, 
and grown, and taken root, has come from her. Cruel 
nurse though she was, our Fathers drew from her 
bosom the courage with which they resisted her. 

strong mother of a Lion-Hue, 
Be pi'oud of those strong sons of tliine, 
Who wrenched their rights from thee. 

What wonder, if, in noble heat, 

Those men thine arms withstood, 
Retaught the lesson thon hadst tanght, 
And in thy spirit with thee fought. 

Who sprang from English blood. 

Whatever harmonies of law 

The growing world assume, 
Thy work is thine — The single note, 
From that deep chord which Hampden smote, 

Will vibrate to the doom. 

As I just said, the condition of existence in the 
wilderness and the need of constant and strenuous 
personal exertion made class distinctions impossible. 
The Puritan's faith, which was based on reverence 
for the individual soul, taught a doctrine of equality, 
which his situation rendered it easy to accept in prac- 



u 

tice. This coiKlition also begat another sentiment, or 
rather, another principle, which has been i)reserved in 
undiminished vigor to our own day, and which has done 
miuii to give direction to our history- That is the 
principle which honors lal)or. This community has 
never respected an idler, whether he were rich or poor. 
The capacity to labor was the chief and most valued 
possession of our ancestors : and the disposition to labor 
took a high rank among the virtues. 

From the reveience for the individual soul, and the 
doctrine of equality which was its offspring, came, 
naturally, the institutions of education, and the laws 
regulating the descent and disposition of property. 
The doctrine was early announced that the whole prop- 
erty of the state is bound to educate all the children of 
the state; and it is as firmly settled as any constitu- 
tional principle whatever. 

Human nature has its course here as elsewhere. 
With the increase of wealth and the holding of neces- 
sary public oilice there grew up, before the Revolution, 
a sort of gentry, for whom the manners and opinions 
of their class in England had some attraction. Copley's 
pictures and family tradition shew some tendency to 
luxury in dress and manners. But the plain fashions 
and simple manners of a frontier agricultural people 
prevailed in Worcester as elsewhere. The up}KM' class 
was easily entered and easily left. 

Xext in importance to the i)rovision for universal 
education was the policy of the law which constantly 
favored the division and subdivision of estates. The 



15 

slight preference given to the eldest son, the only 
remnant of that doctrine of jirimogeniture which lies at 
the foundation of the institutions of England, was soon 
abolished. Estates were divided equall}^ among sons 
and daughters. All property was made liable for debt. 
A simple form of conveyance was devised. Long 
trusts and entails were almost unknown ; and as soon 
as they began to be known legal methods were devised 
to avoid them. 

It was also the good fortune of this community that it 
belonged to a commonwealth composed of a people like 
itself. It was not, as Ireland to England, tied to an alien 
government and an alien race ; so that its own great 
qualities had full opportunity for free and fair growth. 

Such were the birth and origin of our city. Such 
were the influences that surrounded its cradle. Such 
was the faith instilled into its childhood. We find 
Worcester purchased of the Indians, permanently 
settled, its name a monument to a great victory for 
civil and religious freedom, peopled by men who feared 
God, who loved liberty, who honored labor, who 
inherited a passion for adventure, on the one hand, 
and the sober, restrained habit of self-government, on 
the other, to whom education and justice were the 
prime necessities of life, and in whose eyes every 
human soul was the equal of every other, before God 
and man. Let us next see its growth ; — in what 
school, in what gymnasium, it w^as trained and exer- 
cised, till it reached the full measure of a robust and 
vigorous manhood. 



Ki 

Of course, the i-eligious and moral inrtiiences of which 
I have spoken, which surrounded AVorcester, at its 
foundation, continued in operation. I Hnd, in addition, 
four principal intluences which determined the character 
of this people for the next one hundred and fifty years. 

These were : — Its occupation ; The education and 
discipline of political duties ; — The century-long 
struggle with England ; — Its military history. 

For more than a century, the occu})ation of this 
community was chieHy clearing and tilling the soil. I 
could state nothing not familiar to my audience, if I 
should attempt to describe the farming of the first 
century after the settlement, with its rude and clumsy 
iini)lements, or contrast it with the cultivation of our 
fields to-day with tiie aid of modern science, machinery, 
and docile and improved breeds of cattle and horses ; or 
with those wonderful western farms, which have made of 
the American farmer a merchant, whose competitor is 
on the Ganges and the Bosphorus. But no human 
occupation more tends to bring out the sterling mental 
and moral qualities than that of the former in a new 
country. There were but 734 persons, of our population 
of 58,291, engaged in agriculture in Worcester in 1880. 
T shall not, therefore, be suspected of a desire to flatter, 
when I alKrm, as the result of a large experience, the 
superiority of the agricultural class over any other, 
taken as a whole, in ca})acity for the duties of citizen- 
ship, whether as voters, jurors, or legislators. In our 
climate, the life of the early farmer required the constant 
exercise of patience, observation of natural laws, endur- 



17 

ance, industry. Ownership of the soil brings with it 
the habit of command, and of self-respect. The 'New 
England farmer has ever combined a character cautious, 
slow, conservative in the ordinary concerns of life, with 
an unmatched rapidity of decision and prom23tness of 
action in great emergencies. 

The responsibilities of citizenship also, elevated and 
ennobled the men on whose shoulders they rested. The 
townsmen had to deal with, understand, debate, and 
decide the highest questions of State. At least four 
times since the first settlement — in the Pequot War, 
King Charles' attempt on the charter, the Revolution, 
the Rebellion — has the very life of the State been 
depending. The Constitution of the United States was 
to be adopted or rejected. Four times within a single 
century, the whole principle and framework of the 
State Constitution were under discussion. When the 
Government got under way, our relations with England, 
with France, and later with Mexico, the annexation of 
Louisiana and Texas, the wars of 1812 and 1845, the 
extension of our dominion over California, the abolition 
of slavery, reconstruction, the establishment and pro- 
tection of American manufacture, the subtleties of 
finance and currency, — upon all these, beside the man- 
agement of the aflairs of the Commonwealth and the 
town, the individual freeman must record his vote. To 
understand and help settle these questions was itself a 
liberal education. 

But to contend with forest, with sterile soil, and 
inhospitable climate was not enough. A race of boors 

2 



18 

might have done that, and remained a race of Ijoors 
still. In common with the peo])le of the rest of the little 
Commonwealth the century-long struggle with England 
had its great intluence on the charactci- of the dwellers 
in Worcester. Many of them must have well known in 
youth the first settlers of Plymouth and Massachusetts 
wdio came over between l()liO and 1040. As we are 
reminded by a great New P^ngland scholar, there were 
not ten years together, from the landing at Plymouth 
to the surrender at Yorktown, " wdien some great and 
sacred right of our Fathers was not assailed or menaced 
by the government of England, in one form or another." 
The danger from that mighty powder, to the liberty he 
or his fathers had come into the wilderness to secure, 
w^as scarcely ever out of the mind of the New England 
freeman, as he sat in his dwelling, or ploughed his field, 
or took council with his fellows. He w^as perpetually 
meditating on the means of securing it, ready to defend 
it in argument, or, if need be, to die for it. Constant 
meditation of such a theme gave him dignity and 
loftiness of character and bearing, and brought him to 
see with absolute clearness the true boundar}^ which 
separates liberty and authority in a State. Hence came 
to our ancestors that most valuable of great qualities 
which make the temper of a great race — constancy. It 
is a quality worth to a people more than literature, or 
art, or w^ealth, or peace. They learned to keep before 
them a great and noble public object through years, 
through generations, through centuries. They never 
were turned aside from it l)y what was personal, or 



19 

petty, or temporary. May God grant that no effemi- 
nacy of riches, that no sickly or selfish culture may 
destroy it in the hearts of their descendants. 

This sketch would be incomplete, without speaking 
of one other educating force. 

The civic achievements of this people have been 
such that we have not been accustomed to speak of them 
as a warlike people. Yet the history of Massachusetts 
has been, in large degree, a military history. In every 
generation, but one, she has gone through a war which 
has tried to the utmost her courage, endurance, and 
resources. Yet the passion for military glory has 
never been characteristic of our people. American 
history has ever most delighted to dwell on the civic 
virtues of our military heroes. There can be no 
greater test, or greater educator, of heroic quality in 
a people than the burden of a righteous war, appeal- 
ing to moral and patriotic sentiments, carried through 
with unflinching constancy to final triumph. 

Lord Chatham told the House of Lords in 1777, — 
" America has carried you through four wars, and will 
now carry you to your death. I venture to tell your 
Lordships that the American gentry will make officers 
fit to command the troops of all the European powers." 
" It is not in Indian wars," said Fisher Ames, " that 
heroes are celebrated ; but it is there they are formed." 
There were scarcely ten years together, from the first 
settlement, till the conquest of Canada in the war which 
ended in 1763, when, a Worcester farmer was safe 
in his dwelling, by reason of the danger from French 



20 

01- Indian. His life was spent under arms. Wor- 
cester liad her full <|Uota in tlie four New England 
regiments which captured Louisburgh from the vet- 
ei-ans of France. From a population of 1J:00, she sent 
more than five hundred men into the campaigns of the 
ten years which ended in 175(5. She had her full share 
of danger and glory in the despei-ate strife of eighty 
years, until, at (^>uebec, the lilies went down before 
the lion, never again, but for a brief period in Louisi- 
ana, to float as an emblem of dominion, over any part 
of the continent of Xorth America. Whatever share 
others may have taken, the glory of that contest is the 
glory of Massachusetts; that victory is a Massachu- 
setts victory. 

The strife with Fi-ance over, the struggle for con- 
stitutional liberty with England blazed up with in- 
creased heat. The peace of 17(v3 was succeeded by 
twelve years of hollow and treacherous truce. The 
people of Worcester knew well on what ground they 
stood. The great debate was conducted at every fire- 
side. Says an illustrious American historian, native 
of Worcester, to whom she sends salutation on her 
birthday, " one spirit moved through them all. They 
debated the great question of resistance, as though God 
were hearkening: and they took counsel reverently 
with their ministers, and the aged, and the pious, and 
the brave, in their villages. The shire of Worcestei- in 
August (1774) set the example of a county congress, 
which disclaimed the jurisdiction of the British house 
of commons, asserted the exclusive right of the col- 



21 

onies to originate laws respecting themselves, rested 
their duty of allegiance on the charter of the province, 
and declared the violation of that charter a dissolution 
of their union with Britain." Gage sent his spies here. 
It was rumored in August, 1774, that he meditated 
sending part of his army to execute the regulating act, 
which forbade town meetings except by the written leave 
of the governor. The people of Worcester purchased 
and manufactured arms, cast musket-balls, provided 
powder, and threatened openly to fall upon any body 
of soldiers who should attack them. 

When the war of the Revolution came it found 
Worcester ready. Timothy Bigelow, whom our late 
eloquent and beloved fellow-citizen, Judge Thomas — 
would he were living, and in this place to-night — de- 
scribes as "the village blacksmith, sagacious states- 
man, prudent and gallant commander, devoted patriot, 
chevalier of nature, whose chivalry was illustrated in 
breaking and not in forging the chains of human 
bondage" led the best disciplined regiment in the 
revolutionary army, a regiment of Worcester men, 
bearing a name covered with glory in two wars — 
the 15th Massachusetts. 

The war of 1812 unfortunately divided the opinion of 
the people of Massachusetts as they were inclined to sym- 
pathize with England or France in the great struggle 
which rent Europe in sundei-. The Federalist looked 
upon England as the sole defense of mankind against 
the ambition of Napoleon. He regarded the power of 
France with a dread, which we cannot realize, even 



22 

when we read the wonderful eloquence of Fisher Ames. 
But the final judgment of history must be, that the 
war of 1812 was a righteous and a glorious war. We 
were compelled to it by the impudent British preten- 
sion to search American vessels on the high seas, and 
take from them every man whom a midshipman should 
suspect, or pi-etend to suspect, of being a British 
subject. We began the war after England had crushed 
the navy of every other power that had contended 
with her by sea — Holland, Spain, Denmark, France. 
" We encountered England ship to ship, with a chiv- 
alry, with a perfection of discipline, with a constant 
superiority in gunnery, and with a success utterly with- 
out example by any other nation in the world." This 
is lully admitted by Maj. Gen. Sir Howard Douglass, 
in his " Treatise on Xaval Gunnery," a book of high 
authority, published with the approbation of the Lords 
Commissioners of the admiralty in England. It is true, 
we made peace without a formal relinquishment by 
Great Britain of the obnoxious pretension. But it is 
also true that it never was heard of again. "The nation 
issued from the war " said John Quincy Adams, *' with 
all its rights and liberties unimpaired, preserved as 
well from the artifices of diplomacy as from the force 
of preponderating power upon their element, the seas." 
The Duke of Wellington, when urged by the cabinet, 
after the downfall of Napoleon, to take command in 
America, replies in a letter to Lord Liverpool of Xov. 
9, 181-4, which I have not seen cited by American his- 
torians, in which he substantially admits the same thing. 



23 

He says " I do not promise to myself much success 
there. If we cannot obtam a naval superiority on the 
lakes, I shall go only to sign a peace which might as 
well be signed now. You have no right, from the state 
of the war, to demand any concession of territory from 
America." In her contributions, sacrifices, and achieve- 
ments, in this war, Massachusetts may well challenge 
comparison with any other American state. One of her 
towns, when the war ended, had five hundred men in 
Dartmoor prison. An accomplished investigator, Col. 
Higginson, has well remarked " As a matter of fact, the 
Federalists did their duty in action ; the 'Commonwealth 
of Massachusetts furnished during those three years 
more soldiers than any other ; and the New England 
states, which opposed the war, sent more men into the 
field than the Southern states, which brought on the 
contest. Unfortunately the world remembers words 
better than actions — litera scripta manet, — and the few 
questionable phrases of the Hartford Convention are 
now better remembered than the 14,000 men which 
Massachusetts raised in 1814, or the two millions of 
dollars she paid for bounties." 

But in speaking of the forces which have educated 
this people, what shall we say of them, but for whom 
this day would have been a day of sorrow and humil- 
iation? The population of Worcester in 1860 was a 
little less than 25,000. She gave to the war for the 
Union the service of more than 3000 men, one in 
every eight of her population. " They shared," says 
the brilliant orator whose voice you miss this evening, 



24 

" in the shifting lot of the army of the Potomac, from 
its clouded morning to its brilliant close ; in the march- 
ings and lightings of the Shenandoah, till every open 
field and copse became familiar ground : in the early 
welcome victories of Carolina : in patient trials along 
the gulf ; in the hours of turning fortune at IS'ew 
Orleans, Port Hudson, and Mcksburg ; in the tangled 
marches and counter-marches of Tennessee ; in every 
part of the country, in every great campaign, not 
excepting the Napoleonic excursion of Sherman to the 
sea." There is not a record of dishonor in their story. 
For courage, for endurance, for discipline, for intelli- 
gence, the soldiers of AVoix-ester, by the official testi- 
mony of their great commanders, and concurrent witness 
of all authorities, were unsui'passed. We would arro- 
gate to our soldiers no superiority over those of other 
American communities. (Jther states, other cities, have 
their heroes ; but these are ours. If I give but this 
brief allusion to those, whose deeds constitute the 
proudest chapter in our histor}', it is because I know 
that the theme has been so fully treated elsewhere, 
and because I fondly hope that in coming ages, it 
will be the topic of many a centennial. For the great 
battle-fields, where Cnion and Liberty were secured by 
the courage of her sons, the whole two hundred years 
of Worcester had been but one long di-ill. Plato 
declared that the soldiers of Marathon, and the sailors 
of Salamis became the school-masters of Hellas. 
Citizen soldiers ! Of the whole culture of the past, 
consummate flower and crown I You shall also be our 



25 

chiefest educators and example for the future. You 
have not only saved your country, but you have 
determined the character, for ages, of the country you 
have saved. To be an American, henceforth, is to be 
such as you have been. 

Sixty years ago, Worcester was still an agricultural 
town. As the county seat, she had become a centre 
of trade. Yet in 1820, of a population of 2,900, there 
were but 126 persons returned as employed in manufac- 
ture. Lincoln, in his history of the town down to 1836, 
devotes more space to the matter of mines and mineral 
resources, than to manufacture. To-day, upon the 
spot which, its planters thought, might supply thirty, 
or peradventure, sixty families, seventy thousand people 
dwell in freedom and in honor. The sun, as it rises 
on their second centennial, sees them owners of a 
wealth of more than fifty millions ; (a hundred years 
ago, the entire valuation of Massachusetts, including 
Maine, was eleven millions), paying at least eight 
millions each year in wages ; converting a material of 
twenty milUons into a product of thirty-five millions, 
thus creating yearly, a value of fifteen millions ; their 
workmen very largely owning their homes ; their city 
the centre of a populous county, the spot on the eai'th's 
surface where labor receives the largest share of its 
product ; a city without palaces, and without hovels ; 
without an aristocracy, and without a serf ; adorned by 
famous schools, the creation of private enterprise or 
munificence ; providing ample means of education at 
the public charge for all its children ; its fifty churches 



•2<3 

dwelling side by side in charity; its name known and 
honored, and its inHnence felt to the farthest borders of 
the continent; its simple self-government a model of 
honest, frugal, humane, eflieient administration. 

Ft remains for me brielly to allude to the intiuences 
which have transformed the pleasant rural town of iifty 
years ago into the great and wealthy city. There are 
two which in our history have had a close connection 
with each other; — tiie development of our manufacture 
by the great inventive genius and manufacturing skill 
of our people; and the accession to our population of 
our Irish brethi'cn. 

Worcester was the count}^ seat. That fact made her 
a centre of trade, and caused professional men and 
county officers to make their residence here. A popu- 
lation full of enei'gy, public spirit and wealth gathered 
here. The excellence of the land, equalled by few 
towns in the. county, contributed to the same result. 
These beautiful rolling hills, green and fertile to the 
top, were especially attractive for habitation. Our 
noble forests abounded in oak, chestnut and pine. The 
maple gave to the landscape its autumn splendors. 
The elm which, in England, they call " the weed of 
Worcester," lends us, also, its stately ornament. 
AVorcester was on a principal high road from Boston 
to the West. It was natural, therefore, that when the 
capitalists of Providence cai-ried out their scheme of 
inland navigation in 1828, Worcester should be the 
terminus of the Blackstone Canal; and when Boston, 
inspired In- the wisdom and energy of Nathan Hale, — a 



name Worcester has double reason to honor, — begun, m 
1835, the great raHroad system which connects her with 
the West, Worcester should have been the first point at 
which she aimed. The town, though scantily supplied 
with water power, got a fair start of its competitors. 
Its manufacturing industries were planted, and ready to 
grow, under the fostering care of the tariff of 1842. 

Other railroads, leading north, south and west, were 
soon added and preserved her advantage. 

How often, in Xew England history, is the lesson 
repeated, that, from seeming disadvantages, an ener- 
getic people reap their greatest benefit. It was our 
great good fortune that we had no considerable water 
power. If we had had it, there would inevitably have 
gi'own up here great manufactures of textile fabrics, 
carried on in great establishments by giant corpora- 
tions. Worcester would have been owned largely by 
absentees. Instead of a community of skilled and 
inteUigent mechanics, managing and directing their 
own concerns, rendered by the variety of their occupa- 
tion, to a great degree, independent of the changes of 
business, we should have had a poj^ulation working for 
lower and fluctuating wages, its prosperity rising and 
falling with the chances of the times. 

The mechanic arts, as Blackstone says of the 
sciences, are of a sociable disposition, and flourish best in 
the neighborhood of each other. Every new workshop 
was an attraction to others. The momentum given to 
our industries in the beginning by our railroad advan- 
tages has never ceased its operation. 



28 

This neig'hboi'hood is the native region of inventive 
genius. A delightful story is told b}^ Whitney of a 
Worcester County captive in Queen Anne's war, in 
1705, wlio was taken by the Indians to Montreal, and 
who saved himself and two conii)anions from torture 
and death, and earned their deliverance from captivity, 
by building a sawmill on the River Chamblee, there 
being no sawmill in all Canada, and no artisan able to 
build one; — a story Avhich finds its only ])arallel in 
that of the Athenian captives in the expedition to 
Syracuse, who earned their deliverance by reciting 
the verses of Euripides. 

Within the towns whose ancient borders touched our 
own were born the inventors of the cotton gin, of the 
carpet loom, of the machine for turning irregular 
forms, and of the sewing machine. The first of these 
doubled the value of ever}^ acre of cotton-producing 
land in America. The last has been, doubtless, an 
e(]ual benefit to mankind. 

Within our own borders were invented or j^erfected 
the wonderful mechanism for the making of wire, the 
wrench, the loom, the envelope machine, many imple- 
ments of agriculture, including the modern plough, 
and many other useful machines of the highest value to 
mankind. The detail of these wonderful achievements 
will be given to the public by your historical committee. 
It would be easy to show that many great states, many 
populous nations, have, in centuries of life, produced 
far less for the welfare and happiness of mankind than 



29 

this people in one half-century. What cycle of Cathay 
is equal to the fifty years of Worcester? 

Our Fathers thought it not unfitting to insert in the 
Constitution itself, the injunction upon their descend- 
ants, " especially to cherish the University at Cam- 
bridge." It is not unbecoming this occasion, to urge 
upon the people of this city, now and in all coming 
time, to foster their Technical School, devoted to that 
modern education, which makes science the handmaid 
of mechanic art. By this supremacy Worcester must 
henceforth live, or bear no life. 

I must not pass by another important factor in our 
history, whose influence has been already very great, 
and must be largely taken into account, in our anticipa- 
tion of the future. I mean the immigration, within the 
last half-century, of our brethren of foreign birth, 
especially of the Irish race. Mr. Webster, at Plymouth, 
in 1820, said, with a just pride, that in the villages and 
farmhouses of i!sew England, there was still undisturbed 
sleep, within unbarred doors. IS^ew England, and 
America, so far as it has obeyed her teaching, has ever 
kept her doors unbarred. The great immigration, 
which began about 1830, has enriched Worcester with 
its abundant tide. Of our whole population in 1880, 
of 58,291 there were of foreign birth 15,624. Of this 
number the principal ingredients were contributed as 
follows : 

Ireland, 9,329 Sweden, 84:8 

British America, 3,220 German Empire, 370 

England, 1,207 



30 

TIk' numbei- of persons having one i)aient or Ijoth of 
foreign l)irth was 32,80J:. 

Allowing for the very large number of the gi'and- 
chiklren of emigrants it seems reasonably eei'tain, that, 
of our present population of 70,0U0, (juite thirty thou- 
sand are of Irish descent. To many good men this has 
been a source of alarm. Jiut to me, much meditating on 
this theme, considering it in those large and permanent 
relations which belong to an occasion like this, it seems 
cause for unmixed gratitude to God, both for what it 
has done for us in the past, and for what we ma}^ 
hope from it in the future. Say nothing now of the 
benefit we have been able to confer on them. Leave 
out of view the blessing of Justice, Freedom, Emplo}'- 
ment, Self-government, Education, to those who have 
withdrawn their necks from under the heel of Eng- 
land, a boon which a humane and generous people 
would strain and peril their own institutions to the 
utmost to confer. Think of what this race has done 
for us. 

Without the foreign immigration to this country the 
building of our railroads would have been impracticable, 
or must have been delayed for a generation. That, in 
its turn, would have postponed tlie settlement of the 
"West, would have made the suppression of the rebellion 
impossible, and would have prevented the creation of 
that western market, and access to that western 
agriculture, which, in tlieir turn, have created, supported 
and fed the manufacturing communities of the East. 
Worcester owes its growth, its wealth, its manufac- 



31 

turing supremacy, to that railroad system, Avhich these 
men crossed the Atlantic to build foi* us. 

The English and the Irish race meet in America as 
mutual benefactors. They meet, also, as equals. The 
problem of their perfect union is to be wrought out 
here, on a new field, where equal justice prevails, where 
there is no lord, and no serf. 

We dwell, with an honest pride, on the great qualities 
of our own ancestors. We hope to transmit them to 
our children. In that might}^ national life, drawn from 
so many sources ; of many, one ; of many states, one 
nation ; of many races, one people ; of man}^ creeds, 
one faith ; the elements the Puritan has contributed, — 
his courage ; his constancy ; his belief in God ; his 
reverence for law ; his love of liberty ; his serene and 
lofty hope — will be elements -of perpetual power. 

But see what the Irishman brings, also, as a dowry 
to this marriage w^hich the centuries are to weld. 

The Irish race is consjDicuous among great races for 
great traits. No people that possessed them ever 
failed to achieve a high rank among nations, on a fair 
field. These are: — the capacity to produce great 
men under the most adverse conditions ; the capacity 
for rapid elevation, when conditions are favorable ; 
courage ; soldierly qualities ; the gift of eloquence ; 
the power of severe and patient labor ; the passion for 
owning land ; strong domestic affection ; chastity ; 
deep religious feeling. 

The most English of English historians has drawn a 
picture of England's rule over Ireland, whose dark and 



32 

terrible shadows no other hand can deepen. — Six 
hnndred and fifty years of tlie mo:>t terrible form of 
tyranny, that of a race by a race ; government by 
bayonet, artillery and intrenched camp ; the greatest 
English champions of civil and spiritual liberty denying 
even toleration to Ireland ; whatever is associated with 
deliverance and dignity to the Englishman associated 
with bondage and ruin to the Irishman ; of the two 
greatest English sovereigns, — Cromwell and William, 
— the Irish policy of one, extirpation, of the other, 
degradation ; the most odious laws aggravated by more 
odious administration ; priests, revered by millions as 
the only authorized expositors of Christian truth, and 
the only authorized dispensers of the Christian sacra- 
ments, treated as no decent man would treat the vilest 
beggar ; — These arc Lord Macaulay's touches. His 
authority needs no confirmation.' If it did, it would be 
easy to multiply English witnesses, and to show that 
this state of things continued, without substantial 
improvement, down to the time when the great emigra- 

'Tliat tluTC may he no .suspicion of exaggeration, the following extract is annexed 
from Lord Maiaulay's speech ou the state of Ireland, delivered in the House of 
Commons, Feijruury l!)th, 1S44. See also the treatise on Land Tenure in Ireland, 
in Systems of Land Tenure in various countries, published by the Cohdeu Clul), and 
reprinted at the request of Mr. Gladstone. 

" Misgovernment," says Lord Maeaulay, " lasting I'roni the reign of Henry the 2d to 
the reign of William the 4tir' (that is. for six humlred and titty years), ••'has left an 
immense ma>s of discontent. Vou govern that islanil, not by means of the reHpeit 
which the iieiiple feel for the laws, but b.\' means of bayonet>, ai'tillery. and intrenched 
camp. The iiriiiiary cause is, no doubt, the manner in which Ireland becjime subject 
to the Kmrlisli cmwu. The ;iiniexalioii was eil'ected by coiKiuest. and by ci)n(|uest of 
a peculiar kind. It was :i comiuest of a race by a race. ( H' all forms of tyrannv. I 
belie\e that the wurst is that of a nation over a nation. No t'nmily that cvei' existed 
l)elween populations se]iiiraled by seas !ind mountain riilges apprnMches in bitterness 
the mutual enmity felt b\ iio|iulations lociiljy inlerminglctl. but never morally and 
politically amaliramated ; and such were the luiudishry and the Irishry. The spirit 
of liberty in Phmland was closely iillied with the siiii-it of rurilanism. and was 
murlally hostile to the raimcy. SuCh nii'n as Hampden, Vane. Milton. Locke, though 
zealous generally for civil and spiritual freedom, yet held that the l{oman Catholic 
worship liad no claim to toleration. The watchwords, the badges, the names, the 
places, the days, wliich in the miml of an Englishman were associated with deliverance. 



33 

tioii from Ireland was at its height. Yet what eight 
milHon of men on earth produced more great men than 
Ireland during the last half of the last century ? Swift, 
and Goldsmith, and Burke, and Sheridan, each the 
foremost name in a great department in English litera- 
ture; Wellington, the first soldier of his time, were 
Irishmen. It may be said, that they belonged to the 
dominant race. But take the men whom Ireland claims 
as her own, all on the stage within a period of fifty 
years, — Emmet, 

The noblest star of Fame, 
That e'er in life's young glory sat ! 

Grattan, whose genius gave Ireland her brief taste of 
national life, — 

Tliat one lucid interval, snatched from the gloom, 
And the madness of ages, -vvhen, filled with his soul, 

A nation o'erleaped the dark bounds of her doom, 
And for one sacred instant, touched Liberty's goal ; 



prosperity, national dignity, were, in the mind of an Irishman, associated with bond- 
age, ruin, and degradation. Twice, during the seventeenth century, the Irish rose up 
against the Englisli colony. Twice they were completely jiut' down. The first 
rebellion was crushed by Oliver Cromwell; the second by William the Third. The 
policy of Cromwell was wise, and strong, and straightforward, and cruel. It was 
comprised in one word. That word was extirpation. The pohcy of William was 
less able, less energetic, and, though more humane in seeming, perhaps not more 
humane in reality. Extirpation was not attempted. The Irislj Roman Catholics 
were permitted to live, to be fruitful, to replenish the earth; but they were doomed 
to be what the Helots were in Sparta, what the Greeks were under the Ottoman. 
Every man of the subject caste was strictly excluded from public trust. Take what 
path he might in life, he wa-* crossed at every step bv some vexatious restriction. It 
was only by being obscure and inactive, that "he coul^, on his native soil, be safe. If 
he aspired to be powerful and honored, he must begin by being an exile. At home 
he was a mere Gibeonite. a hewer of wood and drawer "of water. The statute book 
of Ireland was filled with enactments which furnish to the Koman Catholics but too 
good a ground for recriminating on us, when we talk of the barbarities of Bonner 
and Gardner; and the liarshuess of those odious laws was aggravated by a more 
odious administration. For, bad as the legislators were, the magistrates were worse 
still. Courts of law and juries existed only for the benefit of tlic dominant sect. 
Those priests who were revered by millions as their natural advisers and guardians, 
as the only authorized expositors of Christian truth, as the only authorized dispensers 
of the Christian sacraments, were treated by the squires and "squireens of the ruling 
faction as no good-natured man would treat the vilest beggar. In this manner a 
century passed away." 



Plunkett, greatest of the great orators of the House 
of Commons at its greatest period, 

To wlioiii uitli one consent. 

All yield the erown in the hiirli arirunieiit : 

Father Mathew, whose inspired word exorcised the 
demon of intemperance from the bosoms of hundreds 
of tlionsands of his countrymen ; O'Connell, before 
whom England trembled ; Curran, Sheil, Flood, are 
but a few of the great names which have adorned the 
annals of this down-trodden people. 

It is true, they brought with them faults, the result 
of their long bondage, and some very grave faults, 
peculiar to their race. But is it not also true, that our 
experience ol" thirty years has shown their capacity for 
rapid advancement ? Self government and freedom 
are great educators ; as the history of our western 
communities, as well as our own, abundantly proves. 

We need not go outside of our own local history for 
proof of the courage and soldierly quality of the Irish 
race. We need not recount the history of a hundred 
foreign battle-fields, where their valor has given victory 
to a flag, which to them, was only the emblem of 
oppression. We need not revert to our Revolutionary 
annals to remember Montgomery ; or trace the lineage 
of Andrew Jackson ; or name the name of Sheridan, — 
the illustrious soldier at the head of our army to-day. 
AVhen the news came of the dishonor to our flag at 
Sumter, the prompt enlistment of the Emmet Guards, 
the flrst organization of foreign blood, one of the very 
flrst of any blood, that marched to the war, has been 



35 

well said to be " a representative fact of the very 
highest importance to the permanent character of our 
Government." Who can read, without tears of joy, 
and pride, and thanksgiving to Almighty God, that he 
has given such men to be his countrymen, the story of 
the death of O'lS'eil, — that natural gentleman, who said 
when he was dying, "Write to my dear mother, and 
tell her I die for my country. I wish I had two lives 
to give. Let the Union flag be wrapped about me, and 
a fold of it laid under my head," — of the devoted and 
tender McConville, who died at Cold Harbor, with the 
name of his mother on his lips, — of him who gave both 
arms to save the flag of the country he loved, and 
whose stout and constant heart has never yet regretted 
the sacrifice.^ 

I will not dwell upon the strength of the domestic 
affection of that people whose generosity to the kindred 
they left behind them is without parallel, — or upon the 
much needed lesson they give to us of reverence for 
the sacredness of the marriage tie. I have said enough, 
already, of the fruits of their severe and patient 
industry. 

The French, our brethren and allies, who lend so 
much of grace and romance to our early history, and 
who contributed so much to our independence ; the 

1 Sergeant Thomas Pluukett was present at the delivery of this address. He was 
born in Ireland in 1840, and came to this country in 1845. He was Corporal Co. A, 
21st Massachusetts Volunteers. At the battle of Fredericksburg the regiment was 
ordered to charge and passed under a terrific fire from the rebel batteries. The Color- 
Sergeant was shot. Sergeant Plunkett raised the colors, bore them to the front, 
raised the statt" in the air, when both his arms were struck and torn away by a shell. 
He bore his calamity for more than twenty years with invincible patience and cheer- 
fulness, and died March 10, 1885. 



36 

Germans, an element more numerou.s and not less 
valuable than any other, taking the country through ; 
the Scandinavian, the Spanish, are to contribute their 
elements to the mass, which the centuries are to knead. 
Certain types will be, ("or a time, locally predominant. 
But it is well said by a thoughtful writer who has 
carefully examined the disclosures of the census, that 
" Ethnologically, the change will be slight. Supposing 
the entire mass to be fused, the Celtic and Teutonic 
blood, the Latin and the Xorman, would be mingled 
in much the same proportions as they were in the veins 
of the original English settlers. The American of the 
future, supposing present foi'ces to continue, and all 
white elements to fuse equally, would be almost as 
much an Anglo-Saxon as the American of 1820." 

I have spoken, imperfectly, of our military history. 
I have not dwelt at length on the familiar and tempting 
topic of the relation between the mechanic arts and the 
love of liberty. But I should fail in my duty, if I did 
not speak of the chief civic glory of Worcester, her 
leadership in the great political movement which 
resulted in the freedom of the slave. Worcester had 
very early indicated her opinion in this matter. Her 
brave soldier of the Revolution, Timothy Bigelow, said, 
"while lighting for liberty, he never would be guilty of 
selling slaves." Levi Lincoln, the trusted friend of 
Jetferson, the great leader and organizer in Xew 
England in the overthrow of the Federal party and the 
establishment of its successor in power, argued, in 
1781, in the Worcester Court House, the great case in 



37 

which it was held that slavery could not exist under the 
Constitution of Massachusetts. The case was first 
tried in the Inferior Court, whose judges were three 
Worcester County farmers. The Court and Jury, fully 
representing the sentiment of the people, sustained the 
argument of Lincoln that " the black child is born as 
much a free child as if it were white ;" that " it is a 
law of nature that all men are equal and free ; " that 
"the law of nature is the law of God, whose gospel is 
the perfect law of liberty." The Superior Court sus- 
tained the decision, on appeal. This decision, in the 
higher court, was based on a clause in tlie Bill of 
Rights of Massachusetts, in all probability inserted for 
that very purpose. Worcester shared the intense 
indignation of all Massachusetts at the passage of the 
Missouri compromise in 1820. When after the close 
of the Mexican war in 18^7, the great struggle between 
Freedom and Slavery for the possession of the territory 
west of the Mississippi began, it found the workshops 
of Worcester filled with skilful, intelligent, thoughtful, 
liberty-loving mechanics. They were very largely the 
sons of the farmers of the county, who had adopted the 
occupation demanded by the new wants of the time. 
They had drunk in, with their native air, a love of 
constitutional liberty. They held themselves disgraced, 
they deemed labor, their own crown and pride, dis- 
honored, by the existence of slavery anywhere on 
American soil. IS'o orator visited Worcester to plead 
that cause, who did not find his audience in advance 
of his teaching. 

*3 



38 

I claim for the people of Worcester city and county 
a service and leadership in the political revolution 
which achieved the freedom of the slave, to which the 
contribution of no individual is to be compared. 
Charles Allen did a heroic act, when, at Philadelphia, 
he predicted the dissolution of liis party, then in the 
very delirium of anticipated triumph, and came home 
to summon the people of his young city to his side. 
He was one of the very greatest of men. But he could 
scarcely have looked his neighbors in the face, had he 
done otherwise. Elsewhere, it was, at best, a party, 
that was on the side of freedom. Here, it was a 
people. I see that other localities are now making 
claim to be the birtliplace of the Anti-slavery cause, 
which would hardly have acknowledged the paternity 
at the time. So, 

"Seven mighty citios clnimi-d jri-eat Iloimr (Itiiil. 
Tliroiii^h wliidi tin- liviiifr Homer begj,'('(.l his bread.'' 

We will not discuss their title. But as surely as 
Faneuil Hall was the cradle of American Independence, 
so surely was AVorcester the cradle of the later revolu- 
tion. 

Honor to whom honor is due. Writers of history 
have been too apt to ascribe the great results which 
have been accomplished in this country, to the influence 
of prominent persons, and to overlook the strength, 
wisdom and power of a popular sense which those 
prominent persons have but obe3^ed. The orators have 
been faithful to their own guild. Eulogists have given 
the credit of leading the people to eloquent men who 



39 

have merely uttered their voice ; sometimes, to eloquent 
men whom the people have never recognized either as 
safe, or as sane, counsellors. Why should we build 
our monument to men Avho have been always in the 
wrong, whose counsel, if taken, would have brought 
ruin and disaster, and forget the reverence due to a 
people always in the right. Eloquence is a sorry 
leader if it do not utter the voice of sobriety and 
wisdom. The love of Freedom is but a rank and 
poisonous weed in that soil where the love of Truth 
does not grow. The teachers of our people have ever 
been grave and serious men, little remo.ved, either in 
thought or purpose, from the people themselves. The 
American Revolution was not the result of a passionate 
outcry of Patrick Henry, or James Otis. Constitu- 
tional liberty is no mushroom, springing up in a night. 
It is an oaken growth, slowly adding ring to ring, 
through many a summer's heat and winter's cold. If 
Worcester has had few great leaders, it is because her 
people have been leaders. 

In looking back upon the relation of Worcester to 
constitutional liberty, from the time of her planting in 
the forest, down to the close of the rebellion, and the 
great consummation in the adoption of the three 
amendments to the constitution, you can i3nd no time 
from the beginning, when, in the light of experience, 
you could wish her people had acted otherwise. 

In tracing the great forces which have given charac- 
ter to our history, I have omitted the most interesting 
and important of all, the place occupied by woman in 



40 

our social life. This noble theme does not peculiarly 
belong to a historic sketch of Worcester. She, who 

'• Stays all the fair younf.' planet iu her baud-."' 

has here contributed her full share to whatever of 
glory or honor can ])e found in our story. The moral 
temperament, which determines permanently the history 
of any community, is given to it by its women. 
Whether it be true, as physiologists tell us, that, as a 
rule, the mental and moral qualities of children come 
from the mother, and the physical only from the father, 
it is at least true that children learn to follow what is 
excellent in the examples of their fathers, from the 
teachings of their mothers. If our children, in future 
generations, are to imitate whatever there has been of 
heroism in their ancestors, if they are to love their 
country, if they are to be brave, free, generous, gentle, 
they must learn the lesson, as their fathers learnt it, at 
their mother's knees. No nation, no city, no house- 
hold, ever took a lofty place, where the influence of 
woman did not inspire it with the heroic temper. 
DeTocqueville says : " I do not hesitate to say, that 
they give to every nation a moral temperament, which 
shows itself in its politics. A hundred times I have 
seen weak men show real public virtue, because they 
had by their sides women who supported them, not by 
advice as to particulars, but by fortifying their feelings 
of duty, and directing their ambition. More frequently, 
I must confess, I have observed the domestic influence 
graduall}' transforming a man, naturally generous, 
noble, and unselfish, into a cowardly, common-place. 



41 

place-hunting self-seeker, thinking of public business 
only as the means of making himself comfortable ; — 
and this simply by daily contact with a well-conducted 
woman, a faithful wife, an excellent mother, but from 
whose mind the grand notion of public duty was 
entirely absent." 

This is the Frenchman's experience. But the great 
philosopher of IsTew England said better. " What is 
civilization ? " says Emerson, " I answer, the power of 
good women." The legislation of the last half-century 
has placed woman very nearly in a condition of legal 
equality with man, with one large exception. It has 
not yet seemed wise to the majority of either sex to 
clothe her with the ballot. But in every other way, 
from the planting in the forest until this hour, her influ- 
ence in our public life has been on the heroic side. She 
sent out, comforted, sustained, welcomed home, inspired, 
rewarded, the soldiers in the Revolution, and in the 
later and greater war. She enlisted earliest, and was 
most constant, in the great civic contest with slavery. 
On every great occasion, her uncounted vote has been 
counted. 

And now, as the solemn shadow marks upon the dial 
the passage of two hundred years, may we not hope that 
the Power that has been with our Fathers will be with 
our children V Will he vouchsafe to them that the 
virtues, born of adversity, shall survive the prosperity 
they have created ? The old rural life has gone. 
Massachusetts is to be, henceforth, in large degree, but 



42 

a cluster of cities. The contest with wild beast, and 
savage, and winter, and forest, and rocky soil, is over. 
He, who encountered and overcame these rude but giant 
forces, with no servant but his good right arm, is now 
an emj^eror, on whose bidding countless wondrous 
mechanisms, and steam and electricity, and the force, 
which winter snows, and spring and autumn rain, gather 
up and store, in lake and river, wait as humble and 
obsequious vassals. The race, trained for ages in the 
venerable maxims of English law and English freedom, 
is to share its self-government with races to whom law 
has for ages appeared only as tyranny, and liberty been 
known only in its excesses. To the healthful inspira- 
tion of poverty have succeeded the temptations of wealth. 
But there is no old age in our blood. We are still 
a people in early youth. AYe must expect, for many 
generations, a continuance of that wonderful growth, 
which, for the last half-centur}', has outrun the wildest 
prediction. As Burke said of the colonial populations : 
*' State the numbers as high as we will, while the dis- 
pute continues, the exaggeration ends." We have our 
stimulant climate, in which work and not rest is the 
luxury both for muscle and l^iain. The Worcester 
mechanic, in the strife for supremacy, testing every 
intellectual power to the utmost, is to be spurred to 
exertion in a race in whicli modern improvement in 
transportation makes all mankind his competitors. God 
has given here, as nowhere else, inventive skill to the 
brain of man. In our children great races are to be 
blended, who will contribute the qualities of which great 



43 

states are builded. They will have learned to deem 
Education, Freedom, and Justice, the prime necessities 
of life. They will be part of the foremost state of a 
great and free nation. They will inherit institutions of 
self-government, built by great architects on sure founda- 
tions. The American spirit, product of German brain, 
and Celtic heart, and Norseman's restlessness, and 
English constancy, which brought across the sea the 
love of liberty and reverence for law, will be theirs, 
enlarged, strengthened, invigorated, purified, by centu- 
ries of life and growth in congenial air. If God give 
to them, as to their Fathers, faith in a personal immor- 
tality, and in that word which, when Heaven and Earth 
pass away, shall endure, the foundation of their city 
shall stand secure. 



:^? 



